Over the last few hours there's been report via Twitter of a massacre in Houla, a village near Homs in Syria. The number of dead varies greatly depending on reports, but from videos posted on Youtube it seem apparent many have been killed, including a very large number of children.

While it's difficult to be sure of exact numbers it's clear a large number of civilians have died, apparently from shelling, including at least a dozen children if not more. Despite some claims there's no evidence anyone has had their throat cut.

Hadi AbdAllah called head of UN monitors about HoulaMassacre. His reply "Regime does not allow us to travel at night"Hadi Abdallah : We have more than 300 injured dying infront of us & we can't even provide basic emergency care

00:10 BST - NMSyria tweets "#Damascus Suburbs: Jdeidet Artouz: A nighttime demonstration is taking place now in solidarity with the martyrs with #HoulaMassacre #Syria" and "Massive demonstration in Tadamon, #Damascus in solidarity with #Houla. #Homs #Syria"

Testimony of Activist Hadi Abdulla on Al Jazeera, speaking about the massacres committed by the Syrian Regime against the civilians on 25 May 2012..

Three massacres were committed in AlHola City, and more are being committed now
76martyrs are confirmed in AlHola alone, and more than 300 wounded
AlHola city has been under shelling for more than 12 hours

Shooting started at demonstration with bullets and artillery, and shelling has not stopped for more than 12 hours
Hundreds of missiles hit the civilian homes, causing the burning of hundreds of them

Assad thugs (Shabeeha) supported by the security gangs attached the houses located at the edges of AlHola city, and committed field execution against the civilians, they slaughtered them with knives, most of the killed are children.

I called up to the UN monitors and begged them to come to AlHola, they promised to come tomorrow morning
I asked the UN monitors to stop the shelling for only half an hour.

The UN monitors are sleeping now, while the massacres are being committe

We used to count the number of martyrs, but now, we are counting the number of families slaughtered
The whole world help killing the Syrian, not only the Syrian regime

We have many martyrs and wounded that we could not reach them because of the continuous shelling, and the cut-off of electricity

We are still discovering more massacres in the city
The Syrian regime is now killing under the nose of the whole world and in the name of the UN monitors

00:32 BST@ALGRGOR tweeted "Homs: Houla: Fatima Ahmad Abdel-Aal was martyred as she was fleeing the shelling in town"

The Friday protests of Al Houleh bring about a fear to the regime as the area shakes with chants and rises against oppression. The surrounding suburbs of Al Houleh are pro-Assad and continue to fire onto protests using shells to disperse protests but also damaging homes of civilians and defectors.

Today, they repeated the same thing, homes were shelled and this led to dozens of injuries and a number of martyrs. The pro-regime suburbs used artillery, Shilka [anti-aircraft], mortar shells, machine guns, BMP and tank shells on civilian homes. The Free Syrian Army began to defend the civilians thus large clashes took place at the regime checkpoints leading to a loss of lives and also weaponry. The shelling continued after midday for more than 7 hours and continues till now. This resulted in people escaping as also several homes fell in on their inhabitants. A refugee shelter was hit which was sheltering more than 200 families and this led to dozens of deaths and injuries, some of the martyrs are known and others are being confirmed.

The shabeeha [regime thugs] from pro-Assad areas burnt the fields that belong to the civilians in an attempt to further destroy their lives. The regime shabeeha [thugs] led a sectarian attack on civilians in Al Houleh, storming homes that lie at the edges of Taldaw. The shabeeha came from Alqabo, Alsheneyeh and Feleh suburbs and killed several women, children and men with names still arriving but it has exceeded 50. The Al-Kurdi family has been found killed entirely in Aqrab village with the bodies not reachable yet due to the continued shelling. Names arrived from the Alkurdi massacre are father Mahmoud Alkurdi, his sons Fadi Alkurdi, Mohamad Alkurdi and grandson Omar Alkurdi. His mother is in a critical condition [Zainab Arooq]. Their bodies were found with severe torture marks and then executed with knives. This is the typical acts of pro-regime shabeeha [thugs]. The field hospitals can no longer cope as injuries and dead flood in by the minute.

The area is still being bombarded by rockets that are targeting residential houses. The pace of the shelling is getting fiercer by the minute. According to witnesses near the rocket launchers stationed near Kherbet Al Sowda, rockets are fired from there to the north (to Al Houleh). The area is witnessing mass exodus too as civilians are leaving Al Houleh, trying to take refuge in safer areas.

This one of the places I should mention that ongoing investigation - two years and more now (this blog stopped in June and never got very deep) yields results some didn't expect. Looks like whoever did the massacre, a major battle preceded it. And this battle saw rebels coquering at least 2 and probably 4 of Taldou's 5 security posts. New report available at the space I made to accept rebuttals and challenges as well - please check it out:http://taldoutruth.blogspot.com/2014/07/2014-report-main-challenge-space.html

One other update related to the actual post above: Thomson may have seen a misattributed video - victim Khaled al-Fares, seen from 2 views looking like 2 different kids. From Houla (which town unclear), throat torn out and shot through the torso by "shelling" on May 17 - 8 days before the Houla Massacre. So while I've come down citing that in support, it seems I was wrong. Some really horrible things were done to some of these kids, but I've now seen photos of most of them and seen not a single clearly sliced throat. For the record.